Re: Found Asa's first comment about version numbers.

Greywolf wrote:
 > On 20/08/2011 12:45 AM, Asa Dotzler wrote:
 >> Greywolf, so your use case for wanting to know the Firefox version
 >> number is that you're looking for some add-on? Can you say more about
 >> that? How does the Firefox version number help you when you're
 >> looking for some add-on? Also, where you looking for that add-on? At
 >> addonthe
 >> s.mozilla.org? From within the Firefox Add-ons Manager? Out on Web
 >> somewhere?
 >> I think if you can help us understand your use case, you can add real
 >> value to this discussion.

 > A generic example, should have inserted "for example" in the
 > syntactically correct place. Sorry. ;-) And a bad one, since the
 > site has auto-detection of your version have made it superfluous.

Greywolf, we hope to make even more of these kinds of usability 
improvements. Add-ons are a very important part of our ecosystem and one 
of the reasons that hundreds of millions of users prefer Firefox. The 
easier we can make it for those users to discover and interact with new 
features through add-ons, the better.

 > I'm one of the minority of users who do want to know the version
 > number once in a while, for all kinds of reasons (including
 > age-related gaps in memory ;-)).

Vladamir brought something like this up in a blog post recently. He said 
(and I'm paraphrasing) "people don't trust the update system yet." and I 
think I agree with him. For some of us -- especially old folks like you 
and me, we're not comfortable with always updating software like the 
kids are these days with their iPads and their Facebook just doing that 
magically for them.  We like the confidence that we are on the version 
of Firefox we think we are.  I get that. It's going to take some time.

I've adjusted my habits already to just click About->Troubleshooting to 
get that piece of mind.

 > I just don't see why it should be moved. Those who don't want/need
 > to know it don't care. People like me do care. It seems to be a
 > gratuitous change, done for no good reason that I can see.

Wolf, in general the Mozilla folks don't make "gratuitous changes for no 
good reason." I've explained in other posts here why moving it out of 
the About dialog and placing it exclusively in the Troubleshooting 
dialog actually helps the use case we're optimizing for while preserving 
the user's ability to still get valuable troubleshooting information.

- A